Lutron Caseta in an Old House

Recently I spent a lot of time researching home automation from Phillips Hue, WeMo, Inseton, etc. First off let me say I’m not an electrician I’m not sure if this is installed 100% correct.

I came across a deal on Amazon from Lutron P-BDG-PKG1W Caseta Wireless Dimmer Kit. Normally I hate wiring anything electrical in my house but this was pretty straight forward. My house is older and it recently had a new addition installed. The problem is when you are turning on your lights you have to backtrack through house to turn them on. What’s cool with Lutron Caseta is it comes with the Wall switch that you have to hard wire then what they call a Lutron PJ2-3BRL-WH-L01R Pico Remote Control which is wireless.

You can mount these inside the wall just like your normal light switches (without having to run any wires).

Since I have Sonos Wireless Speakers, I saw that Lutron also had a remote dedicated for Sonos. The top button will Play/Pause, The Middle section will do Volume Up/Down, the little Circle will go to your next Favorited item in Sonos, and the bottom button will skip to the Next Track.

Some problems you may encounter if you are installing these on a 100+ year house cutting the hole for the old work box was difficult with old plaster.

As you can see in the images above, the plaster was so old it just started crumbling which I had to spackle and repaint the entire dining room.

The dining room was a easy to install besides the whole plaster and having to repaint.

Installing Lutron Caseta Wireless in a 3-Way Switch

This is where it was a little tricky with installing the stairs light switch. Since there is a switch at the bottom and at the top of the stairs this is called a “3-Way switch“. The installation guide / video reference provided by Lutron was completely wrong for my old wiring.

Installing the Pico Remote at the top first

At the top of the stairs I wanted to install the Pico Remote because I figured it would be furthest away from the bridge device. I first had to go that outlet and wire nut/tape off the existing switch. The video that was provided said there should have been (3) Black wires and (1) Green or copper. My switch had (2) Black wires and (1) Red wire. I had to wire nut the (2) Black wires together and the (1) Red wire nutted separately. I then turned the breaker back on to make sure the switch still worked at the bottom of the stairs and the lights past the top switch still worked. In which they did, so now I had to hard wire the switch at the bottom of the stairs.

Installing the Lutron Caseta Switch at the bottom

Inside this switch I had (1) Red wire (1) Black wire (1) White wire which was completely different than the video that called for (3) Blacks and either a green or a copper.

This is pretty much how the wires looked on the inside

I figured the red was going to go to the Green wire on the Lutron Caseta wireless and the Black wire to one of the blacks and the white to the remaining black wire. Once I had everything wire nutted / electrical taped I turned the power back on to make sure the switch powered up and turned on/off the light.

If you are installing the Lutron Caseta Wireless Dimmer with Pico Remote in your Stairway here’s everything you will need to accomplish this.